Welcome to my website!

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Western Michigan University (WMU) in Kalamazoo, MI. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, where I was also an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2022. My research and teaching lie in the areas of feminist political theory, democratic theory, law, rhetoric, and emotions and politics.

My book manuscript, Feminism and Fury: Justice, Vengeance, and the Performance of Politics, critically examines the gendered features of the liberal democratic tradition’s repudiation of vengeance as inimical to political life. Liberal societies purport to have transcended private vengeance as a means of dispute settlement in favor of public means of resolution in and through law. Existing research in political theory approaches the problem of vengeance and its attendant states like anger and resentment instrumentally, considering their utility or inutility to flourishing public spheres. This way of framing the problem of vengeance, I argue, fails to account for its gendered figuration. More than a mere critique of the gendered grammar by which women’s claims to justice are reduced to cries for vengeance, my dissertation explored how women and other feminized groups creatively negotiate the terms of their figuration as agents of vengeance to challenge our very understanding of what counts as a matter of public justice. You can read my full dissertation (not yet book manuscript) abstract here.

I completed my Master's at the University of Chicago in August 2017 and was awarded the Joseph Cropsey Prize for best master's thesis in political philosophy. Before coming to Chicago, I earned my Bachelor's degree (Honours) in Philosophy and Political Theory at McGill University, in my hometown of Montréal, Canada.

My research has been supported by the WMU Humanities Center, the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, as well as the France Chicago Center.

You can contact me at agatha.slupek@wmich.edu.